Patterns and Contrasts in Asian American Immigration and Economic Outcomes
Introduction
In Chinese, “America” directly translates to “the beautiful country,” a place associated with opportunity and prosperity. That idea has shaped both my parents’ immigration story and my own daily experiences. Today, immigration is a highly debated political issue, often accompanied by rising anti-immigrant sentiment. It becomes easy to see immigrants as fundamentally different from those born in the U.S., and to treat them as a monolith within an “us versus them” narrative. I think this disconnect often comes from limited exposure to the people being criticized. When you don’t know a group well, it’s harder to recognize how similar we actually are.
Asian Americans experience this in a particular way through the “model minority” stereotype, which reduces a diverse community to being uniformly obedient, smart, and successful. Without seeing the full range of Asian American experiences, people may overlook the real cultural, socioeconomic, and personal differences that exist within the community. I present this project in hopes of illustrating the breadth and depth of the Asian American experience.
Let’s Begin!
For over two centuries, the story of America has been, and remains, the story of its immigrants. This first line chart, spanning 1850–2023, visualizes the successive waves of immigrant arrivals that have constantly reshaped this “melting pot.”
Early Chinese immigration was driven by the promise of opportunity, like the Gold Rush, but this promise was abruptly broken by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (notice the vertical marker), which nearly froze arrivals for decades. This period of restriction was later reinforced by the 1924 National Origins Act against the subsequent Japanese wave.
The true transformation is the spike after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. By abolishing racist national-origins quotas, this single piece of legislation became the blueprint for the modern, diverse Asian American community you see represented by these rapidly growing lines (University of Washington, 2022). This chart looks at how policy and law, not just individual choice, have been the ultimate sculptors of the American population and the breadth of the Asian American experience. Explore the timeline and see how the US population has changed over time.
Source: IPUMS 1850-2023
If America is the land of opportunity, then economic success is the clearest measure of assimilation. This second visualization, an animated line chart spanning 2002 to 2024, shows the percentage of households earning $150,000 or more annually, broken down by race.
We can clearly see an unprecedented financial acceleration for the Asian community, whose orange line sits consistently at the very top. Analyzing this trajectory reveals their percentage climbing dramatically from about \(25\%\) in the early 2000s to over \(40\%\) by 2024, a \(15\) percentage-point leap in two decades. This demonstrates that over \(4\) out of every \(10\) Asian households now reside in the top income tier, a share significantly higher than any other group. This chart is the very foundation of the “model minority” narrative. It suggests a story of uniform success with the resulting widening gap between the top line and all others. As we continue to examine how this high-income status was achieved and who truly benefits, we must keep this extraordinary growth in mind.
Source: Statista; US Census Bureau 2025
What is the driving the financial leap we saw in the last chart? The traditional answer, and the structural basis of the “model minority” narrative, is educational attainment.
This third visualization, a choropleth map, is designed to let you investigate this idea by state. While the map is simple, encoding only the overall Asian population share, clicking any state brings up a structured tooltip showing detailed racial breakdowns across five education tiers.
When you explore states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, you confirm a key fact: The Asian community, in aggregate, exhibit the highest levels of educational attainment, with significant advantages at the bachelor’s and graduate degree levels. This structural advantage is largely due to our immigration policies favoring high-skilled migrants and their clustering in knowledge-based economies.
However, the power of this visualization is in revealing the exceptions. Look closely at the proportions across the tiers in states like Minnesota or Wisconsin. You’ll notice that these areas, with large Southeast Asian refugee communities, show a different, less uniformly high profile. This crucial internal variation tells us that while education is the structural factor driving the overall high income, that success is far from evenly distributed across the community.
Source: IPUMS CPS 2023
If education is the engine of economic potential and success, then citizenship and legal status are the accelerant. On the left, we track median wage changes based on time spent in the U.S. On the right, we track changes based on years since officially becoming a citizen. While time alone leads to growth, the naturalization line is visibly steeper, demonstrating that achieving citizenship provides a significant, compounding economic benefit. This reflects structural access. Citizenship removes legal barriers to high-paying jobs, professional licenses, and government employment.
Source: IPUMS 1850-2023
We’ve examined the structural factors, like high education and citizenship, that contribute to the community’s overall high-income profile. But now we must ask the critical question: Who, precisely, is benefiting from this success, and who is being left behind?
Our fifth visualization is built to answer this by showing four individual comparison charts, each dedicated to a major racial group. This layout plots the separate trend lines for the top 10% and the bottom 10% of household wage earners over time, all measured against the same financial scale to ensure a fair analysis of levels and growth.
The critical insight is found in the Asian American chart. Here, the distance between the two lines clearly shows the magnitude of income inequality. You can see the top decile’s income is at the highest point, influenced by the high-skilled immigration, while the bottom decile’s income remains relatively stagnant over two decades.
By isolating the groups, we reveal the true story: the Asian American community is not a monolith of uniform success, but one experiencing some of the most profound internal economic stratification in the country. The structural benefits of immigration and education are overwhelmingly concentrating at the very top.
Source: IPUMS 1850-2023
The income gap we observed in the aggregate Asian American population is highly misleading; we must look beyond the single line to understand the true distribution of economic struggle and success. Our sixth visualization shows the internal economic divide for 15 distinct Asian subgroups.
By ordering these communities from the most unequal to the least, we can immediately identify where the largest chasms exist. This analysis instantly clarifies that the experience of stratification is not uniform: for the Chinese community, their top earners make over 28 times more than their bottom earners, while other subgroups show far less extreme divides.
This data is the counterpoint to the “model minority” myth. It demonstrates that the category “Asian” conceals profound heterogeneity, with the economic stability of some subgroups contrasting sharply with the immense internal disparities experienced by others. We must look at the specific community, not the misleading aggregate, to understand the true, varied economic realities.
Source: IPUMS 1850-2023
Now that we’ve looked at the structural dynamics, education, citizenship, and internal inequality, at the national level, we now zoom in to analyze how these forces manifest in the city with the highest number of Asian people: New York City
Our seventh visualization is an interactive map-chart interface designed for rigorous neighborhood-level exploration. The map provides the spatial overview, showing the geographic patterns of population growth or decline, while the instantly updating charts below supply precise numeric data—allowing you to choose between viewing the percent growth or the absolute change for any demographic group.
This interface allows us to track the evolution of immigrant settlement patterns from 2010 to 2020. Look closely at the areas showing the largest increases, such as the rapid growth in Flushing (Queens) or parts of Sunset Park (Brooklyn). This vigorous expansion signifies the development of new, often more affordable, immigrant hubs outside of the traditional enclaves. Conversely, you can also select older neighborhoods to see stability or even slight decline, reflecting out-migration as communities gain wealth and disperse.
The map reveals that the Asian American experience is not just varied by subgroup, but also by street corner. These observed patterns of expansion and dispersal demonstrate that socioeconomic realities are truly hyper-localized, showcasing the community’s fluidity and change within urban areas like NYC.
Source: NYC Decennial Census 2010-2020
Lets conclude our analysis by examining homeownership, a key driver of generational wealth and long-term stability, a metric that is often obscured by high-income averages.
This final view allows us to quickly assess the overall homeownership rate across the NYC boroughs. By selecting a borough, you immediately access the specific homeownership breakdown by racial group for that area, forcing a direct comparison between the borough’s overall stability and the racial disparities underneath.
A key finding here is that Queens has the largest Asian homeownership rate of any borough in the city, confirming its status as a significant and stable immigrant hub.
Source: NYC Decennial Census 2010-2020
Conclusion
The data demands that we move beyond simple labels and see the full range of human experiences, from the highest earners in Queens to those struggling with stagnant wages,recognizing how truly varied the pursuit of opportunity is. By challenging the monolithic stereotype, we can see not only Asian community, but all ethnic groups for what they are: a complex, diverse, and integral thread in the ongoing story of America.